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Friday, August 4. 2006

There's this little widget on the left column of the blog called
Calendar, and the dates get filled in every day I manage to post at
least one entry. It serves as a constant reminder of how much I
manage to get written, which most months isn't all that much. But
I got off to a good start in July, which made me think I might be
able to hit every date for the month. Did, too, although the
satisfaction was fleeting, as the day after I filled it out an
empty August calendar appeared. Already missed a day this month --
a day I would just as soon forget in general. Will most likely
miss quite a few more over the next two weeks. Going out of town,
so even on the instances when I am able to connect I won't have
my usual tool set, office, and all that.

I do have quite a bit I want to write about, even putting
aside Israel's going apeshit in Lebanon, which shot to the top
of the priority list in July. The priority should be easy enough
to explain. We like to talk about how 9/11 "changed everything,"
but that's just our usual myopia. It mostly became an excuse for
overreacting on a global scale, bringing out many of our very
worst characteristics. But while most of the rest of the world,
including a great many and possibly most Arabs, sympathized, the
world's tolerance of our great tantrum was bound sooner or later
to run thin. Israel's destruction of Lebanon, and Hezbollah's
defense of Lebanon, amount to another watershed event, and I
think for most Arabs and a great many Muslims this event will
resound like nothing in recent history. As an affront it is
comparable to 1948, where the pro-West Arab regimes were so
severely humiliated that most soon fell to coups led by junior
officers. The Arab nationalism of the officers was critically
damaged by the 1967 war, leaving the region's more progressive,
more secular forces moribund, opening the way for an Islamist
insurgency -- especially in the regions most oppressed by the
US-Israel alliance. But two things have happened in this war
that hadn't happened in 1948 or 1967: one is that the US role
has never before been so nakedly exposed, and this is bound to
taint every regime in the region with close ties to the US:
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, the rump of Iraq.
The other is that Hezbollah has thus far frustrated Israel bad
enough to be widely seen as a viable force, and as such a model
for the whole long list of complaints the region has accumulated.
So the net effect of the US in Iraq and Israel in Lebanon will
likely be to drive the region into increasingly bitter strife
directed at us.

That may not seem like all that big of a military problem,
but the US and Israel have weaknesses that their arms don't
cover -- especially from people who aren't likely to back down.
Over the last few weeks I've read four books about oil, which
happens to be a pretty good place to start. The Saudi "oil
weapon" in 1973 was flawed in several ways that aren't true
any more, but even if it isn't deliberately employed, the US
is extremely vulnerable to even minor disruptions, and such
disruptions are likely to have sizable political costs. The
US is also economically vulnerable, especially to China, and
that's another front where arms aren't all that useful.

Meanwhile, the public in the US is totally clueless, and
not just the segment that still follows Bush or points even
loonier. The last month has made me vastly more pessimistic,
not so much because of all the things that have gone wrong --
and there's a lot in that department that will prove awfully
tough for many people to get over -- but for how little grasp
our so-called leaders have of it. I've spent a good deal of
my life watching corporate leaders follow the book straight
into the jaws of financial disaster -- I've worked for three
or four companies like that, and seen it coming every time,
each time more clearly. This is like that, but this time the
scale is humongous. This looks very bad.

Anyhow, for me at least it's probably good to take a break.
Get away from the news. Burn up some gas while it's still only
$3/gallon. Go to a town that actually has record stores. Maybe
read that Ruth Reichl book I haven't had time for. Learn to
tolerate a few holes in the calendar -- you just got the gist
of it anyway. And at the end of August, the calendar will flip
over and all those holes will be gone, replaced by a blank
slate.